Album Review: Malignant Aura – “Where All of Worth Comes to Wither” (Death/Doom)

Written by Kep

Way back in 2022 (which I swear feels like a decade ago already) I contributed a short writeup on Malignant Aura’s debut LP Abysmal Misfortune is Draped Upon Me to one of our monthly roundup articles. Among the words I said were these: “These are tracks you will get lost in, that you’ll wallow forlornly in, tracks that burn like fire and then bury the ashes beneath six feet of cold dirt.” It was a record that felt both shorter and longer than its 54 minutes in that it was easy to close your eyes and sink into the melancholy of it all, drifting through shadows and graveyards before being jolted from dark revery by furious charges of anger, unseen clouds pouring rain out of thunder-cracked skies. My expectations for this new LP were, accordingly, high.

As it turns out, Where All of Worth Comes to Wither is a more distilled, more violent experience than its predecessor. It stretches across 45 minutes in only five tracks, one of which functions as an intro, and in that more concise runtime it manages to delve deeper into both ends of the death/doom spectrum. It’s an album of sanity’s frayed edges, of trying and failing to balance grief and rage inside a single tormented vessel. Miserable pits of sorrow, uncontrollable frenzies of sheer violence. Where All of Worth Comes to Wither plumbs the depths of the human soul, the suffering of the psyche, and the ugliness within mankind, then paints all of it into one monstrous canvas of disparate yet indisputably related elements.   

You’ll notice not long after the gongs(!) crash to open the first minute of the instrumental title track that GODDAMN is the guitar tone wicked on this record. It’s caustically sharp, the sort of burning, almost buzzing sawtooth sound that almost hurts to take in. A quick peek behind the credits curtain shows producer extraordinaire and Damn Good at Recording Loud Sounds Guy Brendan Auld at the board for his fellow Aussies, plus Arthur Rizk as masterer, and that makes sense: two guys who understand the best ways to get heavyweight-class old school sound with the best of modern means. The guitars should be and are the stars here, intertwining gloomily, meandering together, lulling you to an accepting sort of despondency as they rise and fall. Then comes the sudden arrival of “The Pathetic Festival”, shattering the doors to splinters and seizing you by the hair, forcing a torrent of hateful death down your throat. 

This transition is the Where All Worth Comes to Wither experience in its most essential form: dirging, funereal sorrow, overcome with overwhelming whirlwinds of rage and pain, eventually sinking back into despair. Deep, gripping tremolos from the guitars offset by jabbing staccato licks launch “The Pathetic Festival”, which is the tightest of the album’s non-intro tracks at seven minutes. At times it’s almost martial, then it’s crushing, angular doom, then it’s revisiting the opening blast of battering death. Across it all are the tormented, gutty vocals of Tim Smith, whose performance here is grotesque, horrendous stuff (complimentary). Spewing, choking, howling, growls full of phlegm and bile, stentorian pseudo-spoken word: it’s spectacular stuff.

This record is simply stuffed to the gills with tremendous moments. There’s a goddamn RIFF and a half at :49 in “Languishing in the Perpetual Mire” that hits a syncopated groove and churns in a deeply satisfying way, and a brutish swinging compound meter crusher around the four-minute mark. The ending stretch of “Beneath a Crowd of Anguish” feels like a slow descent into the hell of madness, an incisive dropping riff compelled first by incessant blasts before it slows and expands, gaining what feels like tons of weight as it grinds down. The production supports across the board, and sometimes it makes the moment: for example, the dry snare’s popping tone is dominant in passages of merciless blasts in a way that makes those moments feel more frenzied and desperate. 

My favorite parts of the record are unaccompanied sections of twin guitars, burning and weaving in and out of one another slowly in a way that’s clearly informed by Mournful Congregation’s early works (and with tasty old school tone to boot). A passage like this leads us to the ending stretch of the “Languishing in the Perpetual Mire”, establishing a beautiful sorrow-drenched motif which the rhythm section rejoins, providing a palette for desperate solos and somber spoken word that close the track. Another of these intertwining guitar passages actually begins the song, and yet another signals the beginning of the end as enormous closer “An Abhorrent Path to Providence” enters its final quarter; emerging from beneath a particularly tortured vocal passage, the guitars feel like the grave dirge leading us home, taking us into eternity. 

THE BOTTOM LINE

The follow-up to a great album in Abysmal Fortune is Draped Upon Me, Where All of Worth Comes to Wither is like a more concentrated, more punchy version of a proven formula. Malignant Aura’s willingness to push even further into both the funereal and death metal edges of their sound, and their ability to write captivating songs that deftly incorporate those elements, make this sophomore effort a particularly excellent one.